If done smoothly, this could be very slick. It’ll be interesting to see how Google implements it. I found one odd statement in his post, though. He states:

Google’s aerial images are seamlessly integrated into Google Earth already, in contrast to Microsoft’s Live Search Maps, which forces the user to turn on the “Bird’s-Eye” mode to see aircraft imagery.

What? Either he’s never used Virtual Earth (Live Maps, etc), he’s confused, or I’m mis-reading his statement. Still, it sounds way off-base. Bird’s Eye imagery is in addition to the “aircraft imagery” (which I assume means “satellite imagery”), and it’s a neat option to have. For just viewing normal, flat imagery, Google Earth works essentially the same as Virtual Earth.

Anyhow, this StreetView news is pretty cool. It’s been a long time coming, so I’m hoping it’s integrated in a creative and useful manner.

The Virtual Earth 3D blog has a post today that explains in detail how they create each 3D city. From the article:

Microsoft’s acquisition of Vexcel Corporation, a 20-year old provider of remote sensing solutions, provided the Virtual Earth team with a broad background in photogrammetry, geospatial data production, and digital elevation model (DEM) generation and refinement. The models and their texturing are generated from aerial imagery generally captured at a 15 cm ground sample distance (GSD) by planes flying at roughly 5,500 feet over the target city and capturing a minimum of 5 views for each building (top and 4 sides). Since the Vexcel acquisition, this aerial imagery is increasingly being captured using the Vexcel UltraCAM series of high-resolution digital cameras, providing Virtual Earth’s 3D display with sub-meter accuracy.

Along with being able to generate massive numbers of models per city, they’re also able to load quickly for each user. In fact, this is one of my favorite things about Virtual Earth. They’ll load 3D models very quickly and very low-res, then slowly sharpen them up as you zoom in on them.

Google Earth, on the other hand, can only load full-res models. Google’s models tend to look a little better than the ones in Virtual Earth, but the quantity and load time make VE’s cities look much better.

The full article goes into much more detail, and it’s well worth reading.

That’s quite a bit of good stuff. While I’ve always been impressed with the rate of imagery added to Virtual Earth, I’ve felt that they’ve been behind Google Earth/Maps in terms of features. Improvements like this are helping them to narrow that gap. Many of these are things that Google Maps can already do (cross-browser support, traffic-based directions, etc), but it’s nice to see them continue to catch up.

Bird’s Eye imagery has always been a unique feature that they have, so adding hybrid support to that will be neat to see.

One of the problems with NASA WorldWind is that it uses public domain data, and most road data isn’t public domain. Therefore, there really isn’t any road data in the application, which makes it far less usable.

However, OpenStreetMap data is public domain, and now you get get that data into WorldWind. It takes a few steps to get it loaded, but Earth Is Square has the details. Hopefully they can incorporate this data into a future release of the product so that more people can take advantage of it.

…as far as I can tell, there’s no way to see all of the markers in a particular small section of the map (say the block where I live). There also doesn’t appear to be any easy way to automatically monitor changes within a certain radius of a particular location. These features (analogous to Wikipedia’s watchlist feature) would make it a lot easier for public-spirited Google Maps users to keep tabs on map changes and quickly revert vandalism. I’d personally be happy to help police edits in the area around my apartment, but there’s currently no easy way for me to do that.

I think it’s a superb idea. Like him, I’d be happy to watch my local area and check for bad edits, as I’m sure many other people would be happy to do.

They’re quite close to having this feature already, but it’s not quite there yet. If you click on the “See user-created content” link after performing a search, you can see all user-created items for that search phrase in your area. However, there is no way to search for ALL user-created items in an area, or way to narrow those items down by date. I think a simple process would work:

Let me define an area — a simple bounding box would work.

Give me an RSS feed for changes/additions/deletions in that area.

I’d drop that RSS feed into Google Reader and always know about changes to locations near me.